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The organisation explained that the meeting will "set a milestone" in the
development of Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs), as Icann considers a
fast-track process for a limited number of governments or administrations.

The fast-track process is being considered in order to meet the "immediate
needs" of these governments, as well as providing a proof-of-concept model for
the long-term roll-out of IDNs.

Icann chief executive Rod Beckstrom said that IDNs, which could be addresses
made up of Korean or Cyrillic characters, for example, will change the internet
and its user experience dramatically.

"This is one of the most exciting developments for users of the internet
globally in years. IDNs will enable people the world over to use domain name
addresses in their own language," he said.

Icann added in a statement announcing the beginning of the fast-track
adoption process that the international top level domains will offer "many new
opportunities and benefits for internet users around the world by allowing them
to establish and use domains fully represented in their native languages and
scripts".

However, Icann said that application developers also had to embrace the new
domains, and make it possible for users to register and use clients and services
in their own language.

"Not all application software is capable of working with IDNs. It is up to
each application developer to decide whether or not they wish to support IDNs,"
said Icann.

"This can be browsers and email clients, for example, but also sites where
you sign up for a service or purchase a product and need to enter an email
address."

Sam Pickles, lead enterprise field systems engineer at F5 Networks argued
that the introduction of IDNs could spur massive growth in internet usage, which
may bring with it new problems.

“We’ve been warned in the past that the internet is in danger of melting
down, and while I don’t think that’s going to happen on a grand scale, reliance
on what is in some cases pretty ancient infrastructure with
single-points-of-failure will almost certainly mean frequent inabilities to
access photos, data, e-mail and so on that are increasingly stored on a server
somewhere in the world rather than on our home PC," he added.